Washington — Is it not delicious? In the aftermath of a hard
fought Oscar campaign, politically correct Hollywood is fending off
charges that the campaigns were too “negative” and dependent on
“lavish spending.” Can we expect the studios to adopt campaign
finance reform for themselves?
According to the New York Times, the likes of Jeffrey
Katzenberg, “founder of DreamWorks” (not the name of a pornographic
movie but of some sort of Hollywood industrial park), prophesies
“that at some point fairly soon the major studios [will] get
together and agree to a voluntary code of ethics to forestall some
of the cutthroat tactics and negative campaigning that he said
characterized this year’s contest.” Well, I like that, a
McCain-Feingold Act for Hollywood. If we cannot get them for bad
taste maybe we can get them for finance violations.
Yet there are so many more reforms the founder of DreamWorks
might consider. How about not only producing movies that appeal to
deranged adolescents but also producing movies for adults? The
Motion Picture Association of America admits that only 27% of
Americans are “frequent moviegoers.” There was a day when the
figure was much higher.
Hollywood’s Molières and Shakespeares might attract an
adult audience by creating movies in which dialogue lasts for more
than three minutes before the obligatory car crash or catastrophic
explosion or burp scene? Hollywood’s sex scenes are all right by my
latitudinarian standards, but Hollywood’s reliance on bathroom
noises and lavatory wit is tiresome.
Also I am not convinced that the actors and actresses possess
the dramatic talents fit for intelligent drama. Most are no more
than gifted underwear models. All the balderdash we have heard
about how tremendously “emotional” the Oscar winners were the other
night only fortifies my belief that Hollywood is for troubled
children. Spare me the guff about the Hollywoodians’ sublime
emotionalism. It puts me in mind of one of my favorite personal
prejudices, to wit: the chief importance of emotions is that they
are so easily faked. The emotional displays of the other night’s
Oscar winners are nothing to brag about. They are merely more
examples of Hollywood’s fakery.
Nonetheless Mr. DreamWorks enthused, “It was a great
evening….So many emotional moments from Sidney’s speech to
Halle and Denzel. Let us bask in the warm glow a little longer.”
Said another, “Halle’s reaction was so emotional and so powerful,”
and this huckster of hype went on to say, “even more eloquent was
the moment when Denzel was on the stage, having just won his Oscar,
and Sidney was in his box on the side of the theater. They had this
moment where they were standing there, just kind of shaking their
Oscars at one another.” Frankly, all that Oscar shaking strikes me
as unseemly.
Let us return to the matter of how easily emotions are faked.
“Halle’s” tears and trembling were obviously faked. She clearly
thought all the white Hollywoodians in the audience who had just
made her the first African American actress to win an Oscar for
“Best Actress” were hypocrites. In essence that is what she was
saying between sobs. She thinks Hollywood is full of racial bigots.
It probably is. We know it is filled with political bigots. It has
no tolerance for those who do not accept the liberals’ constantly
changing party line. It is also filled with bigotry against fat
people, ordinary people, and, as I have implied, adults.
It is also filled with bigotry against the educated and the
civilized. Its enthusiasm for Oscar night’s infantile displays of
emotion is an example. What is so admirable about emotion?
Mussolini was an expert at emotion, and the German fellow too, and
Marc Antony, when, in his funeral oration, he whipped up the crowd
to such frenzy that it went on a murderous rampage. How would Mr.
DreamWorks feel if Miss Berry’s hysterics had provoked her audience
to burn down DreamWorks, whatever it actually is?
Thankfully such emotions as Miss Berry’s are easily faked, but
remember the observation of that pre-Hollywoodian dramatist Oscar
Wilde, “The advantage of emotions is that they lead us astray.”
Ponder that arcanum, Hollywoodians. It is called wit.
